The march toward reconciliation across the Taiwan Strait continues. Last month, Chinese President Hu Jintao met Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of the KMT (Nationalist Party), Taiwan's ruling party. Coming on the heels of the inauguration of Taiwan's new president, Mr. Ma Ying-jeou, who has promised to stabilize relations between Taipei and Beijing, the meeting is another sign of the desire on both sides of the Strait to promote peace and prosperity.
The Hu-Wu meeting was the first encounter between the heads of the two ruling parties in over half a century.
Mr. Hu has met KMT heads, but only when the party was out of power. Those meetings were seen as attempts to drive a wedge into Taiwan domestic politics, signaling that better relations were an option if the Taiwanese people changed their government. Such crude manipulations failed. Taiwan's voters had their own reasons to return the KMT to power.